curated by Chiara Gatti with a critical text by Bruno Corà – from November 22 to March 9, 2025.
Architectures of Nature. Domes of Seeds and Cathedrals of Grass Threads. The German artist, now based in Tuscany, presents a large installation at MAN that adorns the museum’s main floor with light and ethereal sculptures, a tribute to the lightness of nature and, at the same time, to its complexity.
Skillfully lifting sculptures made of dandelions, stems, pods, or horsehair, Christiane Löhr‘s hands raise delicate tree-like structures in space, creating minimal landscapes.
To the new abstract forms of small woodland temples, a tribute to Sardinia is added for the occasion, where the artist presents small accumulations of grains or seeds, evoking towers and nuragic structures.
However, natural inspiration in Löhr’s work does not become a didactic testimony of vegetation and its species. Her reflection sublimates the material into a dimension of radical abstraction and absolute form, characterized by balance and proportion among the elements, a sense of space, and the value of emptiness.
The exhibition also includes a selection of drawings on paper, created with oil pastel, graphite, or ink, resulting from a similar sculptural process in which the fibers of the paper are rubbed and scratched like plastic material.
Christiane Löhr, (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1965) lives and works between Prato and Cologne. She graduated from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under Jannis Kounellis (1994), with whom she later completed a Master of Arts (1996). She has exhibited at Chaumont-sur-Loire, Haus am Waldsee, the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte, the San Fedele Museum in Milan, Wuppertal, Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz, MART in Rovereto, Villa Panza in Varese, and Centro Pecci in Prato. In 2001, she participated in the 49th Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann, and in 2016 she was awarded the Pino Pascali Prize.